It started out like any other prison night. LPOP had just sent me the latest Dean Koontz novel and I was eager to dig into it. The lights go out in the dorm at 10 PM but inmates are allowed to purchase AAA battery powered reading lights that clip onto the back cover of a book. With these discrete lights, I could read until the wee hours of the morning if I cared to. This night, however, was not to be one of enjoyment and mental escape.

Shortly after the dorm's harsh fluorescent lighting went off, there is a relative quiet with the sounds of snoring punctuating the stillness. I was intently following Koontz's storyline in the dim glow of my reading lamp when I heard a strange noise that came from the cubicle across from mine. It was a sudden gurgling, burping sound like a stuck drainpipe releasing a big bubble of air. At first, no one thought much of it because many prisoners have nightmares and cry out in their sleep. A minute later, though, pandemonium reigned.

The loudness of the unusual noise had stirred an inmate from his bunk to check on a new guy who was sleeping on the bed above him. The new guy had been at the prison for only a couple of months so it wasn't generally known to us that he had a serious heart condition. But his other cube mates knew and when they shook the new guy's bunk and got no response, the shouting started. In an instant, the lights were on and all 120 of us got up to witness a grim sight. The guards were called on the emergency intercom and they came quickly. Under their orders, the stricken inmate was laid out in the center aisle by his cube mates. Up until that point in my life, I had never seen someone die up close and personal. The image I will take with me forever was the deathly blue-gray pallor and the look of asphyxiated agony on the body's face. Since there are no medical personnel on duty at night, the local town's Emergency Medical Team had to be called. It took them over an hour to actually get inside the prison because of "security issues." The medical team now had a rapidly cooling body to work on. They tried their best with CPR and drug injections straight to the heart but it was futile. After the body was strapped down and carted away, we all learned about the now dead inmate's repeated visits to the prison infirmary where he complained about severe chest pains. This seriously ill inmate was simply given some aspirin and told to come back again and again. He wasn't even given permission to rest from his prison job on the gardening crew. So, for two months, this guy went to work with a leaking heart and then died. The moral of the story is "When in prison, never get sick and never get hurt." This is a code to live by because despite all the government's propaganda, medical assistance in federal prison is incompetent at best and barbaric at its worst.

Do you know how minor dental cavities are fixed in prison? They simply yank the whole tooth with local anesthetic and give you a couple of aspirin for the pain. If you need special emergency medical assistance, it will take hours to get it. One time, I suffered a kidney stone attack after lights out. The pain from a kidney stone is one of the worst things you can imagine and it took over four hours to get me through security and into the local town hospital. The guards who escorted me were nice enough to look the other way when a nurse insisted that I take a forbidden Vicodin but they broke regulations in doing so. As you can probably guess, medical marijuana prisoners face special challenges in prison. They are not there because they are healthy individuals who exercised their free will to thumb their noses at the government. On the contrary, they are people who are fighting various illnesses through the use of a plant which seems to help. Most of them had a network of health professionals such as doctors, chiropractors, homeopaths, and alternative therapies to help cope with their maladies. In prison, you have nothing except for the will to survive.

Originally published in the Prison Outreach Press, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Winter 2011).

When cannabis is intentionally mis-scheduled by the federal government, as having no medical use and not safe under a physician’s supervision, despite mountains of scientific evidence proving multiple uses and safety, unsurpassed by any man-made medication.

When scientific medical study of cannabis is prevented by the government to perpetuate intentional mis-scheduling of cannabis.

When intentional mis-scheduling of cannabis is used by local government to profit from seized property and incarceration of citizens, and deny them the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

When police act as the judicial branch of the law and become judge and jury.

When police and local government profit from property seizure, giving motive to hunt the public and find you guilty. By human nature, this profit motive will turn a “good man bad.”

I am a retired cardiovascular surgeon, who has been targeted and victimized. I have lost my freedom and Constitutional right to bail, which limits my ability to defend myself. I have lost my family, my career, my property, my family photos and heirlooms and everything I worked for my entire life. Police have made public statements, indicating I am guilty, prior to court; and place false photos in local media, showing marijuana plants, when none were found. This and the profit motive, will prevent me from receiving a fair trial. I have been subjected to cruel treatment, which amounts to physical and mental torture. If I could give my life so this would not happen to others, I would. Jimmy Carter stated, “The punishment should not do more the harm to society than the drug” (medicine). If no laws are broken by the personal use of marijuana, the property seizure and taking freedom from citizens, is itself a crime. I am a P.O.W. in the war on drugs; the war against our own citizen. So I say this to you, President Obama, “Give me Liberty or Give Me Death… Stop the War!... Reschedule Cannabis as a medicine!”

~ David B. Allen, M.D.Spring 2011

Originally published in the Prison Outreach Press, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Fall 2011).

This essay was written in spring 2011, live from United States Penitentiary Lompoc, when Luke was serving year three of his thirty-year prison sentence. Luke Scarmazzo will be incarcerated until the year 2027 for operating a legal CA medical marijuana
dispensary.

As school children we are all taught that you are innocent
until proven guilty but any good defense attorney will tell you that the
American justice system operates on exactly the opposite premise. Before one
word of argument is spoken, the defendant starts out surrounded by a cloud of
guilt andhas to fight both tooth and
nail to dispel this prejudice; the rules of the courtroom are slanted heavily
in favor of the prosecution.

Also, to make matters worse, if a defendant does not accept
the plea deal a prosecutor offers and instead chooses to exercise his right to
a jury trial, and then loses, the judge frequently will sentence them to the
maximum penalty under the law for challenging the Government’s authority. In
short, the court system is a game you rarely want to roll the dice in because
the losses can often times be unendurable.

Considering these commonly known, repugnant facts about our
legal justice system, although I was innocent of the assault charges that
landed me in jail, I accepted a plea bargain and was released after two years
time served.

At about this time I ran into an old friend who was working at
a medical cannabis dispensary in Oakland, California called “The Third Floor.”
He repeatedly urged me to come by and check out his job. I was a medical
cannabis patient already and already traveling to the Bay Area to obtain my
medicine, so I said I would stop by to see him.

His building was located in the busy downtown area. I found
parking, pushed through the front entrance, climbed a narrow stairway.What I saw forever changed my life!

I entered a long wooden-walled room with rather dim lighting
crowded wall-to-wall with people. In the far corner, a glass counter stood with
over twenty different kinds of cannabis displayed in it. These many types
almost seemed to glow with a light green luster. The room’s entire left side
was dedicated specifically to a display of starter plants and to my immediate
right was a table area where one could medicate and relax. As the next hour
passed, I witnessed hundreds of people come and go from the counter. I could
not believe what I was seeing; it was mesmerizing. I knew immediately that I
wanted to start a dispensary in Modesto, my hometown.

Two primary motivating factors played into my decision. One,
it appeared to be an extremely good way to make a living and two, there were
many patients in the Central Valley who, like me, had to travel a hundred miles
or more to get their prescribed cannabis.With these thoughts in mind, I approached my good friend Ricardo Montes
with my ideas.

Ricardo had been in an automobile accident a year earlier and
had received a formidable five figure settlement. I knew he wanted to invest
his money in a promising business venture and I needed the capital; hence, we
made excellent partners. We leased a building in a busy strip mall, completed
the remodeling and renovations and opened for business in February the next
year.

Our first day of business as “California Healthcare
Collective” (CHC) was rather uneventful.We were not very busy and by closing time we were satisfied with the
turnout, but unimpressed. Then, the next day, the headline of the front page of
the newspaper read, “Pot Dispensary in Modesto.” When I arrived at work the
next morning, there was a line of people waiting at the door. The line was so
long that it looked as if a blockbuster movie was premiering inside of our
building.

From that point on, our business grew exponentially each week.
We decided it would be wise to implement our own self-regulation. Our security
personnel rigorously examined the state identification card of each patient.
Our receptionist contacted the physician’s office to verify every doctor’s
recommendation. We cut the state cannabis limit in half and dispensed only four
ounces at a time. We also sought legal assistance from attorney Robert
Raich.Mr. Raich is an authority on the
distribution of medical cannabis and advised us how to operate a legitimate,
legal dispensary. His interpretation of the law is that cannabis is a medicine
and therefore exempt from taxation. Many dispensaries followed this legal
interpretation at the time. Ricardo and I, however, disagreed with this
position and decided that it was prudent to pay taxes until a definite ruling
was made on the issue.

We thought that satisfied everyone. The community supported us
and the patients praised CHC.We
followed state-enacted law but members of the Modesto City Council, supported
by the Police Department, thought otherwise. They immediately started
proceedings to ban dispensaries within the city limits. Their intentions were
to zone CHC out of existence. We hired a land-use attorney and met with the
City Council many times.On each
occasion, the outpouring of community support was overwhelming. The Council
members sensed that they were fighting a losing battle and finally, after
months of litigation, conceded. We were exhilarated. CHC could continue to
operate without interference and resume serving the collective’s patients.

Our triumph, however, was short-lived. Twenty-four hours
before ourfinal meeting with the City
Council, they called the federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and had us
arrested. The DEA can, at any time, raid any of the thousands of legal
dispensaries that are currently operating even if they are in full compliance
with state laws.According to the
Department of Justice, which oversees the DEA, any cannabis use is illegal and
state laws legalizing its medical use mean nothing.

The day we were arrested also happened to be my daughter
Jasmine’s fourth birthday. She and her mother, DeVina, were waiting for me at a
hotel in Disneyland. I was scheduled to catch the noon flight to Los Angeles. I
never made that flight. I never showed up for her birthday party. Unbeknownst
to my wife and daughter, men in black military fatigues had stormed our home
with machine guns, ripped me out of bed at barrel-point and arrested me.

Kathleen Servatius was the federal prosecutor assigned to our
case.She was a tall, slender older
woman with short hair and dark, deep set eyes that leveled a piercing gaze. She
also had a reputation for ruthless ambition. As I would soon learn, good trial
attorneys are not always concerned with justice as much as they are with
creating persuading arguments. Routinely, the victor at a trial is on the side
that told the most compelling story. Ms. Servatius charged us with a drug
kingpin crime called conducting a Continuing Criminal Enterprise (CCE.) This
charge is almost always reserved for international drug lords and cartel
leaders. To be convicted of this offense one has to have committed three or
more federal drug felonies over a definable period of time while supervising
five or more people, or in other words, be a business that routinely documented
its legitimate sales of cannabis. The penalty for this crime is a mandatory
minimum of twenty years in prison with a maximum of life. We were unnerved by
this flagrant charge and the prospect of such an intimidating sentence but we
knew we had followed California law completely and committed no crime. Weighing
these thoughts and considering my prior experience surrendering my rights to
the government, we decided to go to trial, confident that a reasonable jury
would see through the government’s façade regarding the charge. The prosecutor
offered us a ten year plea deal, but we refused to capitulate and admit that
abiding by state law was wrongdoing.

This seems like a good point in this narration to publicize
that prior to opening the dispensary, during its operation, and after its
dissolution, I wrote and recorded hip hop music. One month before we were
arrested, my recording label released my debut album along with an accompanying
video called “Business Man.” On that video, I uttered the phrase, “Fuck the
Feds.” The lyrics were written in response to the frustration I felt with the
Bush Administration’s opposition to medicinal cannabis and their over-taxation
of the working class.

During the trial, the judge did not permit us to present a
defense that we were a state approved dispensary. The judge claimed state law
has no applicability in a federal court. The government accused us of being
drug kingpins.In our defense, we could
not mentionthe words “medical cannabis”
or“state law” or the judge woulddeclare a mistrial. Our attorneys fought and
remonstrated with the judge and prosecutor to allow us to explain the
circumstances of our actions but each time we were met with a stiff rejection.
Ms. Servatius, against our objections, played the music video during her
closing argument. Again we argued that the video was artistic expression and
had no relevance in a courtroom but these protests also fell upon deaf judicial
ears.Because of these “witch trial”
rules, Ricardo and I were both found guilty by the jury and later, sentenced by
the judge to over twenty years in prison.

With good behavior, my release date is April 25, 2027. After
trial, the jury discovered how much time we were to receive and they were
appalled. They could not believe, as most Americans cannot, that we were going
to be imprisoned for over two decades for legally dispensing cannabis. They
beseeched the judge to dismiss their verdict but the judge was unmoved. Several
of the jurors filed affidavits with the court recanting their verdicts. This is
one of a number of issues we raised on appeal in the 9th Circuit Court of
Appeals. We felt sure the appellate panel would correct this injustice and
overturn our egregious sentences. I was certain we would return home and be
reunited with our families. I was wrong.

I had just gotten back from working all day in the prison
commissary warehouse and I was anxious to return to the semi-privacy of my
cold, cramped cell when I noticed my name on the mail distribution list. I
picked up my mail from theofficer’s
station and saw that there was a letter from my brother, Nick. I eagerly opened
it. The first line of the letter read: “Bro, sorry to hear about the news.”

I thought to myself, “What news?” He wrote how he had read in
that morning’s newspaper that the 9th Circuit had affirmed our convictions. I
was devastated. My attorney had not even contacted me with the news. I felt as
I had when I heard the judge’s gavel slam and the guilty verdict read aloud,
but much worse. This feeling has much more permanence and finality. Like a
heavy mallet, this thought hammers me that the next twenty years of my life
could likely pass within these dreary, interchangeable prison cages filled with
tormented souls.

Before, I was Luke Scarmazzo: business owner, musical artist,
father, husband, brother, son. But now I am just federal inmate number
63131-097. I have been condemned to wander this desert of solitude until I am a
gray, old man. In spite of this, the rain still falls, my spirit remains
restless and my heart’s purpose beats strong. I will never give up hope that
one day I will feel the warm sunshine upon my face, smell the sweet fragrance
of freedom and hear Jasmine’s voice softly whisper, “Welcome home, Daddy.”

Luke Scarmazzo will be incarcerated until the year 2027 for operating a legal CA medical marijuana
dispensary. Write to Luke at:

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or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to
assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.